Matthew Woodwardhttps://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk
Tried & Tested SEOWed, 23 May 2018 12:54:31 +0000en-UShourly1The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce SEOhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/FJo_4pqh_mI/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/the-ultimate-guide-to-ecommerce-seo/#respondWed, 09 May 2018 17:20:10 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=51312Ecommerce SEO doesnt have to be hard work. So in this tutorial I am going to teach you how to increase traffic to your ecommerce with my personal ecommerce SEO process. It doesn’t get any easier than this!

]]>Ecommerce SEO doesnt have to be hard work. So in this tutorial I am going to teach you how to increase traffic to your ecommerce with my personal ecommerce SEO process. It doesn’t get any easier than this!

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/the-ultimate-guide-to-ecommerce-seo/feed/0https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/the-ultimate-guide-to-ecommerce-seo/Google’s New SEO Starter Guide: What You Need To Knowhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/Qoiy1PoqVm4/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/google-seo-starter-guide/#commentsTue, 13 Mar 2018 14:08:35 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=51468You might have missed this. But Google brought us an interesting surprise recently. They decided to revamp their official SEO Starter Guide for the first time in over seven years. The new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide is full of useful and interesting information we can all benefit from. Unfortunately, some of the content in there isn’t clear or specific enough. It’s not that Google is hiding something from you, it’ss that they don’t want to tell you exactly what you need to know to rank higher in their search engines. They prefer if you discover that on your ...

Unfortunately, some of the content in there isn’t clear or specific enough.

It’s not that Google is hiding something from you, it’ss that they don’t want to tell you exactly what you need to know to rank higher in their search engines.

They prefer if you discover that on your own.

But fear not, in this article you will learn everything you need to know from the new SEO Starter Guide and how you can implement that information on your site.

What You Will Learn

What Google expects to see from your website

How to really make your site show up on Google

Google’s guidelines on hiring SEO experts

How to optimise your site the right way

And so much more!

Making Your Site Show Up on Google

The first step to rank on Google is having your site in their index. To do so you need to make your site crawlable and indexable.

To help you achieve that, Google suggests you ask yourself a few questions which will help you find out whether your site is being crawled and indexed-

Is my website showing up on Google?

Do I serve high quality content to users?

Is my local business showing up on Google?

Is my content fast and easy to access on all devices?

Is my website secure?

Let me help you answer each of these questions.

Is Your Website Showing Up On Google?

This question is easy to answer. Simply search for your company or website’s name on Google and see if it shows up.

If I ran a pizza place in London called “Pizza Union” (a company that exists), and I searched for it on Google, I’d see it’s ranking in there in the first position-

If you don’t find your site, make sure you check outside page 1.

Also, if your name is similar to a large company or if it represents a broad term (for example, if my pizza place was called “London Pizza,” it’d be hard to rank for that term for obvious reasons), don’t despair.

It’s not an SEO problem so much as a naming one.

Are You Serving High Quality Content?

You probably know that creating high-quality content is a prerequisite to rank these days.

Don’t worry if you dont have any links or social shares – it could just be your content promotion wasn’t very effective.

But you should certainly pay close attention to these pages and review them against competing search results for relevant keywords.

Is Your Local Business Showing Up On Google?

Note: If you don’t have a local business, you can skip this part.

Local SEO is extremely important if you run a local business, as it works differently than non-local SEO.

Both local and non-local SEO need on-site optimisation and links to rank high in the search engines. The main difference lies in that local sites also need citations.

A citation is an online reference to your business’s name, address and phone number (also known as NAP).

Citations work like links, because Google uses them to evaluate the online authority of your business. What makes citations different from links is that the former don’t need a link pointing to your business’s website in order for you to be credited for them. Getting a NAP is already enough.

To check your local business, repeat what I showed up before; that is, search your business on Google.

Continuing with the pizza place example, I see they show up in the local results.

You should then check to see if your business comes up in listings for popular keywords, like “Pizza London” for example.

If your local business doesn’t show up for your target keywords you can use the WhiteSpark Citation Service to get a boost in local rankings.

If you don’t find your place anywhere, you need to add your company with Google My Business.

The process is straightforward:

In the Google My Business website, click on the “Start Now” button.

Once you do so, you will have to add your company’s information, including your business name, your location, the kind of business you run, and your company’s phone number and website.

The process won’t take you more than 5 minutes and will help you get your company listed on Google Maps.

Is My Content Fast And Easy To Access On All Devices?

Your websites speed not only affects your rankings but it also has a huge impact on user experience.

The number of requests (i.e., how many requests did GTmetrix have to make to load all your site’s elements; the fewer requests, the better)

In general, you want a load time under 2 seconds, and a page size under 1 megabyte.

If you find your site to be above those two thresholds, focus on solving the problems GTmetrix shares with you.
Some of the most common problems related to a site’s speed performance are the lack of browser caching, progressive rendering, HTTP compression, among other problems.

If you want to learn more about the most common speed problems you can face, you can read Google’s own PageSpeed Insights rules.

Fortunately, you don’t need to become an expert in speed optimisation to make your website faster.

With the help of W3 Total Cache, a WordPress plugin with over 1 million downloads and 2,700 5-star reviews, you can optimise your site’s page speed in a few minutes.

Once you install it, you will find there are a large number of sections within the plugin you can check.

Before you get overwhelmed, remember you want to optimise for the problems your site has, not for every single possible you may face in the future.

To that end, you want to go back to GTmetrix’ performance review and check the problems they found.

In the case of Pizza Union, you can see they only have one problem: landing page redirects.

In other words, they have a problem with duplicate content, something that can be easily fixed with the help of Yoast SEO.

But if your website has other, more pressing problems, like lack of browser caching (which allows a user’s browser to “save” a page’s version in their “memory”), you want to use W3 Total Cache.

If that was the case, you’d need to go to Browser Cache, which is the seventh element in the menu as shown above.

Generally speaking, W3 Total Cache fixes the most common problems as default, so you may not need to do anything.

As you can see in the image below, W3 Total Cache has already specified the general cache policy:

Once you have installed W3 Total Cache, you should see an immediate improvement in your site’s speed.

If you don’t, and you don’t know what to do, you should talk to a developer who specializes in site speed optimisation to help you out solve the problems GTmetrix indicates.

Another common issue is the lack of a Content Delivery Network (or CDN), which would make the user download your site’s elements from the location of your server.

That means, if your servers are located in Liverpool, and your user is in Los Angeles, Bangkok, or Cape Town, it would take their browser more time to load your page.

But if you used a CDN like MaxCDN, they could download all the elements from the closest server, making the site’s download speed much faster and efficient.

If you click on W3 Total Cache’s General Settings section, you can select the CDN type you want to use, and the plugin will do most of the hard work for you.

Both the use of W3 Total Cache and a CDN will make your site speed much faster, improving your user experience as well as your rankings.]

You could also use a free plugin like WPSmush to optimize all of your images and reduce your overall page size in just a couple of clicks.

Is My Website Secure?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. Basically, having a domain with SSL will certify your site’s security.

Because the use of SSL impacts in your rankings, you want to make sure you are using it in your site, especially if you accept payments on your site.

You can use the Let’s Encrpyt service which allows you to add a encrypted certification for free.

The easiest way to add a free SSL certification to your site, is by using a server that’s already integrated with Let’s Encrypt, which includes WPXHosting, Siteground & Kinsta.

Once you have the SSL certificate installed on a server level you can use a plugin like Really Simple SSL to enable it on the WordPress level.

Using Sitemaps

Finally, Google talks about making your content easier to find. On that end, they recommend the use of sitemaps:

A sitemap is a file on your site that tells search engines about new or changed pages on your site.

A sitemap tells Google which pages they should crawl, as well as determine the canonical version (i.e., the correct version) of each page.

To help you find the right one, you want to check for the following things:

The results they have gotten to their past and current clients. Ask for case studies and references. Make sure they show specific results (e.g., “Our link building campaign attracted 15 high-authority links which helped driving the organic search traffic 20% in 3 months”).

The person in charge of your site. You want to make sure the company doesn’t outsource the work or give it to a junior executive with little experience. Make sure you talk to the person in charge of your site before signing off.

The link building tactics they use. Make sure they don’t use black hat tactics, unless that’s what you need (for example, if you are in the gambling industry). Ask them to show you specific links they’ve gotten and how they got them.

The timeline and deliverables. SEO takes time, but you want them to make progress on a month-per-month basis. At first, they should focus on keyword research, on-site optimisation, and technical SEO. Later, they’ll focus on link building and content creation. Tell them to tell you exactly what steps will be involved and the time each one will take.

Another important thing to take into consideration, is to get started with SEO before you need it.

As Google mentions in the Starter Guide-

If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

Optimise Your Title Tags and Meta Description

You can have the best content in the world, but if neither Google knows what your page is about nor people understand the content of it, no one will visit your site.

That’s where title tags and meta descriptions come to the rescue.

As you may know, title tags are one of the most important on-site elements of your site.

Google weights the optimisation of your title tags heavily, so if you use the right keywords in it, Google will likely reward you with better results.

Meta descriptions on the other hand will help people (and Google) understand what your page is about.

If you do your job correctly, your click-through-rate (CTR) will skyrocket, increasing your organic traffic (even if you don’t rank number 1).

Here’s how you optimise your title tag and meta description.

Title Tag Optimisation

First and foremost, your title tags need to have the main keyword of your page. You can use an exact match of the keyword (that is, the exact keyword for which you want to rank), or simply use it within a phrase.

For example, if you wanted to rank for the keyword “Pizza London,” like in the case of the company we’ve been using so far, you’d need to add that keyword within the title tag.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case:

Long are the days where you could stuff your main keywords in your title tags and expect good results.

That’s why you need to get creative and use some SEO copywriting in your title tag.

In the case of the pizza place shown above, you could create a title tag that said something like:

Voted The Best Pizza In London – Pizza Union

If you run a local place or a company with a strong brand, you want to add your brand’s name somewhere in the title tag, especially in the main pages (like the homepage and category pages).

Finally, remember that title tags have a maximum length of 60 characters.

If you exceed that length, it won’t hurt your site. Rather, Google will cut your title tag short in the search results.

Meta Description Optimisation

It’s with the meta descriptions where you want to use copywriting to improve your page’s relevancy.

Here’s a good example of a well-written meta description:

You can see that the company mentions what they offer (Neapolitan pizzas), where they offer them (in central London and Oxford), and how they offer them (in their venues, takeaway, or delivery).

For a local business, that’s a great structure. It’s concise and even actionable.

While in the past the meta description maximum characters were around 155 characters, according to Moz, Google has extended their length to around 300 characters.

Blocking Unwanted Pages

Your website likely has many pages you don’t want to show up in Google, either because they generate duplicate content, show sensitive information (like user or personal information) or because your users won’t find it useful.

This may not be the case if your site is small and has less than 50 pages or so.

Either way, if you think there are parts of your website you want to block from Google, here’s what you need to do.

First, use a robots.txt, which is a text file webmasters create to instruct search engine robots how to crawl and index pages on their website.

As the name suggests, this is nothing but a simple .txt file you add in your server’s root folder.

Robots.txt have some limitations in its scope. As Google explains:

Robots.txt is not an appropriate or effective way of blocking sensitive or confidential material. It only instructs well-behaved crawlers that the pages are not for them, but it does not prevent your server from delivering those pages to a browser that requests them.

One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs).

Also, non-compliant or rogue search engines that don’t acknowledge the Robots Exclusion Standard could disobey the instructions of your robots.txt.

Finally, a curious user could examine the directories or subdirectories in your robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that you don’t want seen.

What Google is trying to say is that using a robots.txt is only one part of the whole puzzle. If you link internally to a page you want to block, Google may crawl and index it anyway.

If you want to make sure Google doesn’t index a page (even if it crawls it), you want to use a “noindex” tag, which goes in the header of a page.

You can manually add them to every page you want to block, or using a plugin like Yoast SEO.

By using the “noindex” tag, Google will crawl it, but avoid indexing it (and therefore, rank it).

Using Structured Data Markup

The way Google shows up the results has changed dramatically in the past 7 years. One of the biggest changes is the use of structured data markup.

In the words of Google, structured data markup is:

[A] code that you can add to your sites’ pages to describe your content to search engines, so they can better understand what’s on your pages.

Search engines can use this understanding to display your content in useful (and eye-catching!) ways in search results.

That, in turn, can help you attract just the right kind of customers for your business.

In other words, structured data helps users find out more about a site or page without visiting it. This can impact deeply on your CTR and search engine traffic.

Here are some examples to help you see how they look and work:

If you look for a company like Amazon, Google will not only show their site and pages, but also the following:

The information you see on the right represent two different types of structured data markup, the logos and articles ones.

Finally, if you have a local business, Google can show a lot of useful information about it, like in the example below:

If you aren’t sure whether to use structured data markup in your site, check what your direct and indirect competitors are doing.

If you need help getting started, follow Google’s guides, which explain in more detail how they work.

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/google-seo-starter-guide/feed/68https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/google-seo-starter-guide/Ahrefs Review – 25 Ways To Increase YOUR Search Traffichttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/XRUYvv0VUkU/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/ahrefs/#commentsMon, 22 Jan 2018 16:06:43 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=50938Want to drive a TON of organic traffic to your website? Here’s the basic formula: Pick a topic/keyword Create an exceptional piece of content around that topic Promote it. Build links to it. Rank it. Sounds simple, right!? I’ll let you in on a little secret: It is simple, but only if you use the right tools for the job. What do I mean by that? Well, there are a ton of questions you need to answer before you get started, such as: Which keywords/topics should you be trying to rank for? Is it even possible to outrank the competition? ...

What You Will Learn

My aim is to show actionable ways to use Ahrefs (and no other tools) to get more organic traffic to your website.

Here’s everything I’ll be teaching you:

Getting Started: How to get started with Ahrefs and set yourself up for success (note: do not skip this stage, it is very important).

Backlink Health Check: How to identify (and fix) any backlink issues that may be holding your website back in the SERPs. WARNING: Fixing these issues can lead to an instant rankings boost!

Keyword Research: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is perhaps the best keyword research tool on the market. I’ll show you how to use this tool (and a couple of other Ahrefs tools) to build an initial keyword list for your website.

Getting Started With My Ahrefs Review

Note: It’s $7 for a 7-day trial. I recommend trying the “Standard” plan.

Once you’re in, Ahrefs will prompt you to add a project (i.e. website) to your account.

This is pretty straightforward—give your project a name and hit “next”. Make sure to use the http + https naming scheme.

You’ll then be asked to add keywords that you want to track.

Ahrefs actually suggests a bunch of keywords that your website is already ranking for. Basically, the higher up the list of suggestions they are, the more traffic those keywords are sending to your website.

I recommend adding the first 4-5 pages worth of keywords.

Why? Because this allows you to track your most important keywords (i.e. the keywords that are the most traffic to your website).

Step #3….add some competitors.

Again, you can either add competitors manually (if you know them) or choose from the suggestions Ahrefs gives.

I recommend adding 5 competitors from the suggestions Ahrefs gives.

And finally, add some branded keywords to track.

I really recommend taking a moment to set this one up. We’ll be using it later in the guide.

Note: By default, Ahrefs sends you daily emails about these keywords. If you prefer not to have daily emails flooding your inbox, go into the settings and change this to weekly (or monthly).

That’s it. You’re ready to rock!

Backlink Health Check

Backlinks from spammy, low-quality websites.

Backlinks with over-optimised anchor text.

These types of backlinks can spell disaster for your website.

At best, they’ll prevent your website from ranking as well as it should.

When I gave this report a quick onceover for my own website, everything looked pretty above board (phew!)

BUT…this isn’t the case for all sites.

Here’s an outbound link I found on Moz.com:

This is clearly a spammy domain.

If you find anything like this, remove (or replace) the links on your website.

Also:

Sometimes, you’ll find that your website is linking to a particular URL many times.

Example:

Upon closer inspection, we can see that this is a WordPress theme link present in the theme HTML.

In all honesty, this probably isn’t going to cause any huge issues. However, as it’s a dofollow link across (almost) every page of the website, at the very least it’s diluting authority for no good reason.

I recommend that you remove anything like this from your website’s HTML, too.

#6: Fix Broken Outbound Links

Broken outbound links lead to a bad user experience.

Not only is it annoying to click a link on a website and be taken to a broken page but also, it leaves the visitor questioning the validity of your content.

Why?

Because they’ll assume your website hasn’t been updated in awhile.

Or that you simply don’t put much effort into your content—certainly not enough to curate resources that actually exist.

Also, if Google thinks your content is going to lead to a bad user experience, they certainly aren’t going to rank your website.

Create some content (or improve existing content) around those keywords

Build links to content (wherever appropriate/necessary)

Analyse what did/didn’t work and refine your strategy/plan going forward.

Rinse and repeat all of the above

Trust me:

Do those things, in that order, and I guarantee you’ll see a HUGE traffic increase.

So, let’s get started with the first step: keyword discovery.

#7: Pop a Few “Seed” Keywords into Keywords Explorer

Keywords Explorer is the first place I turn when I want to discover keywords for a new (or existing) website.

That’s because all you need is a few “seed” keywords and it’ll give you thousands of ideas.

Here’s the process:

Go to Keywords explorer and enter a few seed keyword ideas.

Note: There’s no exact process for coming up with these. Just make an educated guess.

Hit the search button.

Note: Make sure to select the appropriate country (e.g. United States) before searching, otherwise you’ll see keyword volume estimates and whatnot for a country unrelated to your business.

Go to the metrics tab.

This shows you monthly search volume, Keyword Difficulty (KD), and tons of other information.

If a keyword looks good (i.e. it has some decent search volume and is relevant to your business), save it to a keywords list.

Note: If a keyword is super-relevant to your business, it makes sense to prioritise it, even if the search volume for that keyword is quite low. As I’ll mention later in this guide, search volume isn’t always the best indicator of traffic. However, it is a good starting point and it’s still worth looking at.

#8: See Other Keyword Ideas (Based on Your Seed Keywords)

Because of this, Keywords Explorer will show you with a bunch (and I really do mean a bunch!) of other keyword ideas based on your seed keywords.

Just hit one of these 6 options on the left-hand menu:

Personally, I usually just select “all”.

However, this will usually give you a few million keywords to play with (see, I told you they had a lot of data), which is pretty d*** impossible to work with.

So, I tend to play with the Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to narrow them down.

Your best bet is to filter for keywords with a KD score of less than 10.

Why? Because anything below KD 10 means that top-ranking results have less than or equal to 10 backlinks on average, so it should be fairly easy to rank for them.

I usually just tick anything that looks good and add it to my keywords list.

And if you prefer to get a little more granular with your keyword suggestions, you can learn more about what “phrase match”, “having same terms”, etc. mean here.

Note: Ahrefs presented me with 32K+ keyword suggestions from just the 8 keywords I entered above…so you certainly won’t be short of ideas!

#9: Find the Keywords/Topics that Send the Most Traffic to Your Competitors

Enter a competitor’s domain into Site Explorer, then go to Organic search > Top Pages

Here you will see which of your competitors pages are attracting the most organic search traffic.

You’ll also see the top keyword that page ranks for, along with the search volume for that keyword.

Note: It’s also worth paying attention to the RD (Referring Domains) column as this shows how many ref.domains are pointing to that page. If you can identify pages that receive a lot of traffic, yet only have a few RDs, it’s most likely a topic that you can rank for pretty easily!

Pretty cool, right!?

BUT it gets even better…

This report also shows you all of the other keywords these pages rank for (in order of the amount of traffic they drive to your competitors page).

This is not only useful for generating additional keyword ideas but also, finding keywords/topics/phrases that you can sprinkle into your content to increase relevance (i.e. LSI keywords).

Now, enter the domains of (at least) three competitors plus your domain in the “but the following target doesn’t rank for” field.

Hit “show keywords”.

Bingo…here are hundreds of keywords that (at least) one of your competitors rank for, yet you don’t.

Tip: Enter competitors with a similar Domain Rating (DR) score. This will ensure that the Content Gap analysis kicks back keywords you stand a chance of ranking for. If you enter Moz.com as a competitor and you have a DR 40 site, the sad truth is that you’re probably never going to outrank Moz.

I recommend paying particular attention to any keywords where your competitors are ranking in the top 10.

#11: Find Keywords That You’re Already Ranking for in Positions 4-6

Therefore, it only takes a ranking increase of one position to see BIG traffic boosts from these keywords.

And improving rankings by 1-2 positions can be as simple as building a handful of high-quality links.

But how do you find these keywords?

Simple.

Enter your site into Site Explorer, then go to Organic Search > Organic Keywords

This will show you all of the keywords your website is currently ranking for.

Note: By default, they’re ordered by the amount of organic traffic they send to your website—neat!

But here’s the trick:

Add a positions filter to show the keywords you’re currently ranking in positions 4-6.

These keywords are your low-hanging fruit—they should be prioritised when it comes to on-page optimization and link building.

#12: Find Keywords AND Topics with High Traffic Potential

Sometimes individual keywords won’t have a particularly high search volume.

Example: “best keyword research tools”

If you were to rank #1 for this keyword, you would receive roughly 30% of these clicks.

That’s a measly 75 visitors/month (approx.)

Hardly worth bothering, right!?

Not so fast.

Looking at individual search volumes for a single keyword rarely shows you the true ranking potential of that topic.

This is because pages almost always naturally rank for TONs of variations of that keyword (i.e. “long-tail keywords”).

So how do you figure out the true ranking potential of a topic?

Easy…

Check how much organic traffic the top ranking pages for that keyword are getting.

If it’s a lot, the topic/keyword has a high traffic potential.

Here’s how:

Go to Keywords Explorer and enter a keyword.

Scroll down to the SERP overview and you’ll see who’s ranking in the top 10. You can also see how much organic traffic these top ranking pages are attracting (across all keywords).

These are the SERPs for “best keyword research tool” and as you can see, the top ranking pages are getting WAY more than 75 visits/month.

So, this topic DEFINITELY has a high traffic potential and is worth prioritising.

Content Research

Keyword research?

Check.

Keyword prioritisation?

CHECK.

(you’re off to a good start!)

But…you ain’t going to rank for any of those keywords without creating some EPIC content around them.

Obviously, some of the keywords you’ve found (e.g. the low-hanging opportunities in positions 4-6) won’t require new content. You just need to optimise—and build some extra links to—your existing content.

For others, however, you’re going to need to create something new!

BUT here’s the problem:

It’s NOT always easy to discern exactly what you should be writing about solely by looking at a keyword.

Example:

Let’s take the keyword “keyword research”.

It’s a great keyword with a ridiculously high search volume (at least for this niche).

BUT, it’s also massively competitive.

If I was to write a reasonably generic guide to keyword research, I probably wouldn’t stand a chance of ranking in the top 3 for this exact keyword.

However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t write about keyword research at all…I just need to “niche down” a little and write a UNIQUE piece of content.

They also add 5+ million new pieces of content to this index every 24 hours (which is absolutely INSANE).

But, data and stats aside, what benefit does this have?

Well, it means that you can enter (almost) any keyword into Content Explorer and it’ll kick back a TON of content ideas.

Example:

That’s 3900+ content ideas for “keyword research”.

And this is only results where the phrase “keyword research” is in the article title…

You can also search for content where the phrase is mentioned anywhere in the article content, which will return exponentially more results!

BUT, like I said, it would be VERY difficult to rank for this exact keyword without “niching down”.

This is because the “big guys” (e.g. Moz, Ahrefs, etc) are currently dominating the SERPs for this topic.

However, we can use the in-built filters in content Explorer to find ideas that:

We can actually compete with

Will actually generate traffic for us

Here’s the setup:

Here’s exactly what we’re doing here (and why!):

Filtering for only English results: Pretty self-explanatory, right!?

Filtering ONLY for results from websites with a DR between 0-59: Because the DR of my website (matthewwoodward.co.uk) is also 59, I only want to see results for sites with the same (or lower) DR. Why? Because these are the sites I’ll be able to compete with easily.

Filtering ONLY for pages with <5 referring domains AND >500 organic visitors per month: This is the important part! By looking for pages that are receiving 500+ organic visits AND have very few links, we can uncover pages that will be VERY easy to outrank. Stealing their traffic will most likely require nothing more than creating better content and building a handful of links (at the most)

Here’s what Content Explorer found for my search:

This page talks about how to uncover keywords by looking at YouTube tags.

It receives 525 organic visits per month, has 0 referring domains, and is 183 words long.

#14: Find Content Ideas That People ACTUALLY Care About with Keywords Explorer

Nobody understands search intent like Google does.

Their algorithm relies on showing users what they want to see.

Because of this, there’s no better way to understand the intent behind a search term (i.e. what people are actually looking to find) than analysing the top 10 search results.

Example:

Let’s take a keyword like “SEO tools”…

Now, there are plenty of SEO tools—some free, some paid—on the market. If we wanted to rank for this keyword, maybe a winning formula for a piece of content would be to create a list of all of these SEO tools, right!?

Again, not so fast.

Let’s go to Keywords Explorer, enter the keyword, and scroll down to the SERP overview.

This shows us the top 10 ranking results.

Instantly, I spot a pattern…

Although most of the results are lists of SEO tools, a lot of them are actually lists of free SEO tools.

In fact, 7/10 results contain the word “free” in the title tag.

This tells me that although people are generally typing in “SEO tools”, they actually appear to be looking for a list of the best free SEO tools.

It would, therefore, be much smarter to go down this route when creating a piece of content around this keyword/topic.

Also:

Keywords Explorer tells us how many links (and referring domains) each of these pages has, allowing us to quickly spot topics with great potential to attract a TON of links.

Link Building

I’ll let you in on a (sad) secret:

You ain’t going to rank for any worthwhile keyword/topic without links.

Sure, less competitive keywords may only require a handful of links whereas more competitive keywords may require many more links (sometimes even thousands) but still, the bottomline is this:

Because this would also be a great additional resource to include at the end of that SEL post, I could simply reach out to the author of that post (Kevin) and suggest that he add a link to my post in that final section.

This is a great, simple way to build links to any piece of content :)

#17: Monitor Competitor Links AND Brand Mentions

You can learn a lot from your competitors.

BUT…

Did you know that monitoring your competitors can be a great source of link prospects?

Basically, if you can identify where your competitors are being mentioned AND linked-to, you can often steal these links/mentions from yourself.

Example:

Here are the top 3 Google results for “long tail pro”:

Right now, I’m ranking in position #3.

BUT…I’d really like to rank #1.

This means that my competitors for this keyword are longtailpro.com and dumbpassiveincome.com.

Now:

Right off the bat, I could throw these URLs into Ahrefs Site Explorer, look at their backlinks, and see if there are any easily replicable links I could steal for myself.

BUT…that’s a different strategy altogether!

What I want to talk about is monitoring both competitor links AND branded keywords to give you a constant supply of link opportunities.

So, let’s start with backlink monitoring:

Like I said, one of my competitors is dumbpassiveincome.com—they have a similar Long Tail Pro review to mine.

However, I personally believe my review to be better. I also updated my review very recently, so it’s super fresh.

I, therefore, believe that anyone choosing to link to my competitors Long Tail Pro review would be better off linking to mine.

So, I want to monitor my competitors review for new links.

If they get any, I can then reach out to the person linking to them and suggest that they link to my review instead (as it’s better).

Here’s how to set up an alert for these links:

Go to the Backlinks section within Ahrefs Alerts and hit “+ New Alert”.

Enter the URL of the page you want to monitor for backlinks, choose “New backlinks” under the “Scope” option, and enter your email address.

You’ll now receive an email whenever there’s a new link to your competitor’s URL—you can then swoop in and steal the link for yourself.

BUT…competitor backlinks aren’t the only thing worth monitoring:

You can also monitor competitors branded keywords.

Example:

Because I have a review of Long Tail Pro, it would be worth setting up an alert for branded keywords like “Long Tail Pro”.

Here’s why:

If someone is mentioning Long Tail Pro on the web, their readers would find a review and tutorial for the tool rather useful.

So, whenever I see Long Tail Pro being mentioned, I can simply reach out to the website owner and suggest they add a link to my review within their post.

In a nutshell, it will diagnose pretty much every on-site issue you could think of, without you really having to lift a finger.

Here are a few useful things you can do with it:

Note: I’m not going to cover how to set up a project or run crawls in the Site Audit tool because, honestly, it’s pretty self-explanatory. But, if you’re struggling, this post (by Ahrefs) explains exactly how to do it, along with a lot more!

#21: Find Slow Loading Pages (Using the Performance Report)

Go to Internal Pages > Performance and you will see a report that looks something like this:

At first glance, this may appear as nothing more than a myriad of pie charts.

But, this is actually showing you the number of pages on your website that are slow to load, in various ways.

I recommend paying particular attention to the “Load time” chart:

The red section of the pie chart shows the number of pages that are too slow to load (and thus, need fixing).

If you click on the red section, you will see exactly which pages these are, along with how slowly they actually load:

One cool thing to note here is that Ahrefs also shows you the amount of organic traffic these pages are receiving.

If you spot a slow loading page that is receiving a lot of traffic (like my Buzzbundle review, for example), I recommend prioritising the speeding-up of that page.

Why? Because chances are it will attract even more traffic if you improve the visitor experience.

Analysing Your Progress/Success

That’s why it’s important to keep your eye on progress and make sure that the grunt work is having a positive impact on your website.

Google Analytics will be your best bet here.

BUT…if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably end up seeing your Ahrefs dashboard much more than your Google Analytics account.

So:

Here are a few things to look for in Ahrefs to make sure you’re heading in the right direction:

#24: Increased Domain Rating (DR) AND Decreased Ahrefs Rank

Are you building a consistent flow of links to your website?

If so, you should see your Domain Rating (DR) increase over time.

Here’s what it looks like on your dashboard:

If it increases, you’ll see a green arrow appear alongside this number with the amount of points it’s increased (much like with the URL rating below).

Similarly, you should start to see your Ahrefs Rank decrease.

Basically, the lower your Ahrefs Rank is, the better, so keep an eye on it.

Note: Don’t obsess over these metrics. However, they are a decent indicator as to the overall status of your website.

#25: Improved Rankings (for Your Tracked Keywords)

Remember during the Ahrefs setup process when I told you to track a bunch of your top keywords in Ahrefs?

Well, that’s because these keywords also show up in your dashboard, like this:

Basically, this shows how many of your tracked keywords are ranking in the top 1-3, 4-10, 11-20, and 21-50 search results.

As rankings improve, they’ll show up here.

This is my personal favourite way to keep an eye on what really matters—if I see improvements here, I know that my traffic is probably increasing, too.

Of course, if you want to take a more granular look at keyword rankings (with graphs and whatnot), you can use Ahrefs Rank Tracker.

This can also show you some super-cool data such as the number of featured snippets you own, and much more.

Useful Tools (That Work with Ahrefs)

Before I wrap this up, I want to mention a handful of tools that incorporate Ahrefs data.

I know from talking to Tim (Soulo) that Ahrefs are very picky about which tools they allow to use their data. That’s why this list is quite short.

Here are the tools I can personally vouch for:

URL Profiler: Pulls in a bunch of metrics (including Ahrefs metrics) for a list of URLs. This is one of my personal favourites. Free trial available here.

Ninja Outreach: Use the free trial of this tool to contact thosuands of backlink opportunities/broken backlinks itc in a couple of clicks. They have a range of link building email templates built in!

Screaming Frog: Industry-leading crawling tool. A must-have for anyone who’s serious about SEO. It now also allows you to pull in metrics (e.g. DR, Ahrefs Rank, etc.) from Ahrefs directly. More details here.

Link Miner (Chrome Extension): Analyse and extract links from any web page. Perfect for finding broken links and quickly assessing them by pulling in metrics from Ahrefs.

SeoTools for Excel: Excel add-on that’s absolutely packed with functionality. If you want to pull Ahrefs metrics directly into your spreadsheets, this one is for you! More details here.

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/ahrefs/feed/321https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/ahrefs/10x Link Building Strategies To Increase Your Search Rankings In 2018http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/gsOcT_Op8oI/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tips/link-building-strategies/#commentsThu, 18 Jan 2018 16:18:17 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=50868The SEO world changes fast. Every week, Google releases new changes into its search algorithm. For this reason, the link building strategies that work today stop working as time goes by. In 2017 alone Google made at least 4 major updates to the algorithm along with many many many more small adjustments To adapt to the new changes, you will need to rethink your link building strategies. In this article, I will show you 10 algorithm-proof link building strategies you can safely use in 2018 to grow your website and attract more organic traffic. What You Will Learn 10x link ...

For this reason, the link building strategies that work today stop working as time goes by.

In 2017 alone Google made at least 4 major updates to the algorithm along with many many many more small adjustments

To adapt to the new changes, you will need to rethink your link building strategies.

In this article, I will show you 10 algorithm-proof link building strategies you can safely use in 2018 to grow your website and attract more organic traffic.

What You Will Learn

10x link building strategies that deliver high quality links

How to use news to attract dozens of high-quality links fast

Why taking advantage of peoples egos is a key link building strategy

And most importantly… how to increase your search traffic in 2018

10 Link Building Strategies For 2018

….but you should only use 3.

Why?

Because it’s easy to get overwhelemd and this tutorial is quite detailed.

So I recommend you read through it all and pick your favourite 3 link building strategies.

Then from those 3 pick the one that is the easiest and quickest for you to execute and do that first.

That will stop you from getting distracted and help you to fast track your results!

#1 – Guest Blogging – Yawn!

Boring right?

But guest blogging is one of the most popular, simplest, and most effective link building strategies there is.

The idea behind guest blogging is simple:

You create a high-quality piece of content

You add a few links in the content piece pointing to your site

You get the piece published in another site, preferably one with a high DA

I won’t lie to you;

Guest blogging isn’t what it’s used to be a few years ago.

Back then, you could use guest blogging as a link exchange without adding much value to the readers.

More recently, however, Google learned the way some people used guest blogging with the intention of “hacking” their algorithm, leading to Matt Cutts (Google’s former Web spam team leader) to say guest blogging was dead.

That statement, nonetheless, ended up being nothing but a threat. Guest blogging, when done with good intentions, still works.

Most websites–both large and small–generally accept links within the content and in the author bio, and these links still provide good value.

The former is very effective, as it can be used with a more natural and better-targeted anchor text, but sometimes is forbidden. The latter is widely accepted, despite not being as effective as the former.

Alex Turnbull, the founder of Groove, used guest blogging as his main link building and content marketing promotion tactic to grow his business to reach over 1 million people.

After publishing in sites like OnStartups, Shopify, KISSmetrics, Buffer, AngelHack, and Copyblogger, Alex ended up attracting more than 10,000 subscribers to Groove’s blog, which drove revenue and growth up.

Another company that was able to drive significant growth thanks to their guest blogging efforts was Buffer.

Leo Wildrich, co-founder and former COO, published 150 guest posts in the first 9 months of the company’s existence, driving over 100,000 signups.

To get started with guest blogging, there are 5 steps you need to follow:

Find your prospects

Qualify the right blogs

Outreach

Create the content

Build relationships

The really easy way to do that is with NinjaOutreach that makes the entire process really easy (In fact: I highly suggest you take advantage of the 14 day free trial for your first campaign)

But you can also do it the “good ole fashioned” way-

Find Your Prospects

The first step to getting started with guest blogging is to find your prospects. These are the websites where you are going to publish your piece of content.

Ideally, you want to publish in sites with high DA (domain authority) and high traffic.

To find sites that let you publish your guest posts, use some of the following footprints:

Keyword + “guest blogger”

Keyword + “guest post”

Keyword + “guest article”

Keyword + “Add Guest Post”

Keyword + “Submit Guest Post”

Keyword + “Submit a Guest Article”

Keyword + “Guest Post Guidelines”

Keyword + “become a contributor”

Keyword + “contribute to this site”

Keyword + “Add Content”

Keyword + “write for us”

Keyword + “write for me”

Keyword + “submit your writing”

Keyword + “submit article”

keyword + “inurl:category/guest”

For example, let’s say you wanted like to publish a piece of content about tourism in London.

This is how the results on Google would look like:

Open Excel, and make a list of all the sites you find.

Qualify The Blogs

With the list you have created, run each site through Ahrefs, my favorite backlink analyser, to check their domain authority.

In Ahrefs, go to the Site Explorer, add your competitor, and once you have the results, click on the link that says Backlinks.

There, click on the Link type button, and export the whole list of URLs you get.

With this list, you want to open each link and figure out how and why they got the link.

Ask yourself, is it because of the quality of their content? Is it because they offer something unique and valuable?

You want to know the why behind the link.

#4 – Newsjacking

One of the key elements of any effective link building campaign is creating great content that stands out and commands attention.

Creating content that has a higher likelihood of going viral, however, isn’t easy.

Instead of wasting time trying to figure out what people may like, you can take what people are already talking about and use that as inspiration for your next piece of content.

This tactic is known as “newsjacking” because you are taking advantage of a popular topic from the news and use it to create and promote your own content.

A classic case of newsjacking is what Oreo did in the Superbowl 2013.

After the energy shut down in the stadium, they tweeted the following:

This Oreo tweet got more than 15,880 retweets and 6,200 favorites in just a few hours. They also got a lot of press (and the links that come with it), including mentions in The Huffington Post, Wired, and CNET.

You can also contact sites that accept guest posts and ask them if they are willing to republish your piece of content.

Go to the contact page of each site, and get the contact information for each editor or manager.

Then send them a pitch like this:

Hi [NAME],

I was checking out [SITE] today and found the great guest post you published about [TOPIC AND LINK].

I loved that article.

I’ve recently published a similar article where I explain [BRIEFLY MENTION MAIN POINT]. So far, it got me:

X unique visits

X social shares

X inbound links

[MORE METRICS]

I think your audience will find it useful this piece of content as mine did, and I’m sure if you republish it, you’ll also get similar results like the ones I got.

If you are interested, I’ll send the article over!

Best,

[YOUR NAME]

When sending the article, make sure to add a few editorial links within it, so you can not only get the link when the republisher mentions where the article comes from (i.e., your site), you will also get high-quality links with great anchor.

This Section In Short

Content syndication is probably the most overlooked yet powerful link building tactic there is.

The hardest part is creating an amazing piece of content that gets shares, traffic, and links.

In the meantime, search for sites that accept guest posts and syndicated content.

Contact these sites letting them know about your successful piece of content.

Most likely, they will be motivated by the great results you’ve gotten to republish it, giving you more links and traffic.

I’ve used this strategy to get published in multiple magazines, websites and e-letters but you can use LinkedIn or Medium to get your feet wet.

#10 – Local Citations

Local SEO link building is often overlooked when doing national or global SEO campaigns – but it’s a great way to go after some links your competitors might be ignoring.

Doing link building for local companies is similar but not the same as doing it for an international business.

While getting links is the key element to rank a site (whether that’s an e-commerce store, a blog, or a software website), local sites need citations.

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tips/link-building-strategies/feed/82https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tips/link-building-strategies/The Ultimate Guide To Freelance Writing Jobs For Beginners [2018]http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/MEUv_pxwNL8/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/freelance-writing/#commentsThu, 11 Jan 2018 10:55:07 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=41916Starting out as a freelance writer can be confusing, can’t it? You have no idea what steps you should take, how you should be spending your time, or if you’re even doing the right thing. But the truth is that it doesn’t have to be that way: Starting a freelance writing business simple, easy and doesn’t require anyi money to get started. You just need to know the right steps to take, at the right time, to get your business moving. That’s where this article comes in, because in it I want to show you exactly what you need to ...

You have no idea what steps you should take, how you should be spending your time, or if you’re even doing the right thing.

But the truth is that it doesn’t have to be that way:

Starting a freelance writing business simple, easy and doesn’t require anyi money to get started. You just need to know the right steps to take, at the right time, to get your business moving.

That’s where this article comes in, because in it I want to show you exactly what you need to do start a freelance writing business.

Here’s what you can expect…

What You’ll Learn

The 7 free essentials you need to get started

9 easy ways any beginner can make money (without experience)

How to find a profitable writing niche

Where to find jobs that accept beginners (at good rates)

How to write a pitch that will jump out of their inbox and into your bank account

Who Am I To Teach You All Of This?

Four years ago I was a dead broke shoe-salesman, with £18,500+ in debt; working 10 hours a day for £5 an hour. I had no qualifications, no connections and no idea what to do with my life.

That was until I stumbled across an easy system for starting and growing a freelance writing business that transformed my life, freed me from debt, allowed me to travel to over 30 different countries and generate more than $120,000 in income.

Then my passions turned to helping teach others start their own freelance writing businesses. And, I’m on the mission to help 1000 people like you start and grow a profitable freelance writing business.

As a writer my work has been featured in some places you might have heard of:

So, Matt approached me to write this article for you because, well…I know my stuff which lead me to create the Freelance Writers School.

And if you follow the steps and the advice in this article, you too can start and grow a full-time freelance writing business.

What Is Freelance Writing?

You provide a writing service to a client based on their needs, which you’ll work out in advanced or will be published in their job description.

Let’s say you’re a freelance writer who writes blog posts, and you’ve been contracted to write an article for Matt’s site.

You’ll pitch an idea (or be given one) and you’ll work on this independently. The amount you’ll charge will be calculated on the amount of words, or the amount of time, it takes to write an article.

You get paid when he’s happy with the article (you can get paid before once you’re more established), and you work together to make it right for his readers.

You’re not an employee and you’re an equal partner to your client. Whilst this is a service and you’re obligated to provide what the client wants – the same way your phone provider is – this is a relationship between the two of you.

Why Become A Freelance Writer?

I’ll admit I’m bias, but freelance writing is one of the greatest jobs to do.

Since 2014 I’ve been able to travel to over 30 countries, relocate to Germany, write for millions of readers, help people change their lives and earn more than $120,000.

All whilst being able to sit at my laptop, sip coffee, and create art.

You’re in control of your income – as long as you’re willing to put in the work – and can rid yourself of the shackles of a nine-to-five lifestyle. (Or use it to grow your income outside of your job).

There are drawbacks, because you have to: find your own clients, motivate yourself, do your own taxes and learn extra skills.

But if you want a life that you control, to do work that you love, whilst earning $40,000+ from the comfort of your own home, then every drawback is worth it.

Quick Start Checklist: Do You Have What You Need?

There are a few essentials you’ll need before you get started.

The good news is that they’re freely available to anyone who wants to start this type of business.

Here’s a short checklist:

Computer: So you have somewhere to do, and save, your work.

Internet Connection: You’re here so you’ve got that down.

Email Address: Make it professional – ilovetopartyandsmokeweed@gmail.com isn’t going to woo any clients.

Free WordPress Blog: So you can have a portfolio; but also practice writing and scribble down ideas as you go.

A Paypal Account: That way you can get paid.

A Desire To Write: Because this job is hard if you don’t enjoy it.

That’s really all there is to it. The rest of it can be learned on the job. There’s no need for any extra products, or investments. If you find you do need anything you can just learn as you go.

For example I’d been writing for a year before I knew what the legal requirements for an invoice were. It didn’t stop me making money or building a business, it just gave me an extra 60 minutes work at tax time.

You also don’t need any qualifications. I have none, and I failed English at college. If I can do it, so can you.

Get started and learn as you go.

9 Ways Beginner Freelancers Can Make Money

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, I want to show you some of the ways that you can start making money writing in the next few months.

These methods have lower barriers to entry and you can mix and match them whilst you find what you like to write, and to increase the amount of income streams you have.

#1: Freelance Blogging

Freelance Blogging is how I’ve made 90% of my money over the course of my career (in conjunction with option #11 too).

It’s also one of the most beginner friendly ways to make money writing because the barriers to entry are much lower than elsewhere.

There are two main options you should look at:

Content Marketing: Writing blog posts for companies who are using blogs, social media and SEO to grow their business.

Helping Bloggers:Lots of successful bloggers don’t have time to create all of their content anymore. You can come on board and help them with their workload. (100% the most fun way to earn money).

Unless Google drops off the face of the earth tomorrow, or people decide they don’t want independent help and advice, then this is a way of making money that is here to stay too.

#2: Freelance Website Copywriting

One of the easiest ways to break into freelance writing is by helping people create the copy for their new website. Here’s the thing:

Hundreds of people get new websites made for their businesses every day. But they have no idea what they should write there. And why would your local plumber have any idea what they should write?

Two of my first ever clients were local businesses (they were across a corridor from each other, so when I landed one I landed the other) who needed their websites writing for them. I saved them money doing it with the agency, and they helped me get my business off the ground.

If you can find a local business with a new website where you can easily see they need better writing, or get friendly with a local design agency, you could find an endless stream of income.

#3: eBook Writing

If you’re a specialist on a topic – let’s say from your past job, or what you studied at college – you can get your break into the industry writing eBooks for people.

My first ever freelance writing job came writing a fitness eBook for a client through Elance (now UpWork), because I was a personal trainer when I was in my teens.

Dave’s entire business is built on freelance writer’s creating eBooks for him. And that’s just one guy. Think of how many sites sell eBooks, or offer them as a free download.

#4: Podcast And Video Script Writing

Think Podcasters and YouTubers do everything off the cuff? Think again.

Many of them have scripts that they work from to keep them on track and focused. And, even as a beginner, you could be the one to write them.

One of my students, Rebekah Donovan, got one of her first gigs writing for a podcast in the health niche, without any experience as a freelancer.

#5: Transcription

Speaking of Podcasts, Transcription is also a great place to get your foot in the door because it’s a non-skilled position. (You’re basically getting paid to write what someone said).

However it can be incredibly valuable content for an online business. So, if you see a podcaster using transcription, you could be the one to help her.

#6: Translation

Do you speak a second language, or is English not your first language? If so, there’s a market for you here.

Many bloggers and content writers want to reach a wider audience, and if you can translate their content into: German, Spanish, Russian, French, Arabic, Chinese or any other language where there is high demand for content, you may have a niche.

To make a professional note: you need to qualified to be a translator. However if you’re a fluent speaker of two languages, many potential clients won’t mind, as long as it’s accurate. Just be sure to declare up front.

#7: Review Writing

Review’s come in a lot of different forms. You’re on an Internet Marketing site so you’re probably only thinking Amazon and Digital Product reviews, but your scope here fits into any niche:

Product Review Writing: Amazon, Digital or other. This can extend into blog posts too, like this review Matt did of SERPed. And if you really want to grind, you can get paid by services like DooYoo to write reviews too.

Service Reviews: You can be hired to write a review on services in your niche. For example, writing about the customer service provided by a hotel or a retail chain.

These all branch off into their own mini-niches too, that you’ll find as you become familiar with the niche you’re writing for.

#8: Product Description Writing

When someone once asked me what I do for a living, I read out a mental list of topics and he said, “Oh yeah, I suppose someone has to write all of them!”. What he was referring to was Product Content Writing.

Take a look at this random page for a fridge on Amazon that I pulled up:

Someone has to write them, right? And they’re readily available jobs. I once went through and wrote product content for over 200 customer claims sites.

It was as mind numbing as possible, but it sure felt good when I got that pay cheque.

#9: Ghostwriting

Here’s a surprising fact:

Many bloggers, business owners and even authors don’t personally write all of their own content.

Often they bring in someone like me, a ghostwriter, to help them with their workload and create content they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to write.

In all niches you can find clients screaming out for ghostwriting clients, and if you’ve got the ability to adapt and change your writing voice, this can be a long-term contract that pays well.

Step #1: Find Your Writer’s Niche

Choosing a freelance writer’s niche is d*** scary.

By saying “I only write in this niche”, it feels kinda like you’re shutting yourself off from thousands of other paying clients you could work for.

And, you are…

But that’s a good thing. Let me explain:

Working in a niche is kind of like playing a video game. At the early levels you get all of the lowest grade items, small payouts for your quests and all of the higher level characters can kill you in one swipe.

But as you progress the levels, and specialise is a skill – magic, stealth, strength – you start getting better items, bigger payouts, and those n00bs will think twice before they try and fight with you.

The same goes for niching down. At the start – where many freelancers spend their time – you can only get the low-paying entry level jobs because you’re not good enough, knowledgeable enough or well-known enough.

But once you get through those entry level jobs and start working yourself up through a niche, you build a portfolio and can start writing for other higher paying clients and begin commanding, $60, $100 and even $200+ an hour for your services.

So whilst you decrease the amount of total clients you can work with, you increase the amount you can earn.

In this section you’re going to learn how to find your niche and unlock a world of higher earning potential.

Start With The Past…

When I first started thinking about niching down I had no idea where to look. I didn’t feel like I had any real interests and skills (outside of writing) that could make me any money.

I told my Mum about this problem and she just looked at me like I was an idiot. “You’ve got lots of skills, what are you talking about?” she said.

She ran upstairs, grabbed me a pen and paper, and told me to write down ten things that I’d done, achieved, enjoyed or read about in the last five years.

Here’s what that list looked like:

Worked as a personal trainer

Backpacked around Australia and Europe

Coached soccer in America for one year

Was the highest KPI seller in my retail store

Played in a semi-professional rugby league

Mentored an 18 year old through his fitness instructor program

Written guest posts for Lifehack and Addicted2Success

Learned basic Spanish

Read a lot of books on productivity and business

Took a Salsa dancing class

It was surprising to me to see how many skills and pockets of knowledge I had that were at least above a complete beginner level.

Although not all of them were winning ideas, the options in bold are what I felt I would be comfortable writing about for a larger audience. .

If you feel that you don’t have any knowledge or skills you could write about, I’d highly recommend trying this task for yourself, and don’t underestimate any skills you might have from the past.
To steal a little from Ramit Sethi, even speaking English is a skill!

Follow The Money

The next best place to look for your writers niche is where you spend your money. This is usually a great indicator of what you’re interested in, and topics you could write about.

Are you the kind of person who spends $50 on a haircut? Perhaps there’s a career writing in fashion and grooming.

Are you the kind of person who takes Thai cooking classes? Food blogs might be calling your name.

Are you the kind of person who has subscriptions to SERPed and Ahrefs? Then maybe a life of SEO writing is in your future.

The Drill Down…

Once you’ve fleshed out all of your ideas, you’d do well to group them into their major niche categories. This could look like:

Travel

Fashion

Internet Marketing

Technology

The final step is to drill your niche into its relevant sub niches and where you can write for them. Each niche has a tree that looks a little like this:

For example, if you were to write in the travel niche this could break down like this:

And if you want to write in internet marketing – much like I did – you might find a breakdown like this:

Each niche and sub niche will have businesses, blogs and podcasts associated with them. This is where you begin to really see all of the opportunities in your niche and where you can begin to look for jobs.

What If My Niche Doesn’t Have A Lot Of Money In It?

Trust me, it does.

Unless you’re into Albino Badger Wrestling or Bon Jovi Themed Horse Racing Events, you’re going to be able to be able to find at least one form of income. Although, those niches probably need freelance writers too.

You can break down a niche into a lot of different chunks and there’s money to be made in all of them. Take your niche – I’m going to use Travel for this – and explore to see which of these elements it has.

If there’s blogs about your niche – which there will be – here’s one really lucrative opportunity for you to Freelance. In fact the more niche you go, the more money you can make for blog posts, because writers are few and far between.

They all compile freelance writing jobs that have been posted there, or direct you to jobs posted on classified sites giving you the cream of the crop.

There’s not much to this, really. You don’t need to sign up or do anything magical. You can just start bookmarking freelance writing jobs that you like the look of.

I’ve used this method to land some of my most consistent clients like Nichehacks and Canva, so you’ll definitely be able to find some higher paying work here too.

Setting Up For Freelance Writing Jobs Alerts

If you’re interested in taking on high-paying, corporate clients, you can use job alerts to notify you of work that is posted in your niche.

I use Gorkana for freelance writing jobs alerts because they have a ‘Journalism Jobs’ section; but you can also sign up to specific job boards, or use Matt’s advice in this article to set up Google Alerts.

Don’t read too much into the titles of jobs on these job boards – like Journalist or Customer Content Creator – they’re just business jargon.

All you need to do through a site like this is set your filters, find a search that suits your needs and then choose their update option. Like this email subscription box here:

That gives me a lot of emails a month, like the ones below, with job information.

These are usually pretty effective because they don’t just send you needless updates, they send them out only when a job gets posted:

Classified Job Postings

Classifieds are an underrated job search tool, but they can be highly effective. There are even services like FreelanceWritingGigs.com that pool the best of the best together for you for free.

You can look for these job postings a little closer to home as well using sites like:

Dig Out Those Unadvertised Goldmines

There’s an unwritten rule in Freelancing that says:

The highest paying jobs are never advertised.

And it’s one of the most true statement you’ll ever hear. In fact, a solid 90% of my client base
right now didn’t advertise their jobs. I went to them, or they were referred to me, and they’re willing to pay more.

I don’t know why it works that way, but you’ll just have to accept that’s the way this world works.

But that begs the question: how do you know to pitch to them if it’s not advertised?

The short answer is that you don’t. You just have to go out there and speak to people, network and find out what they’re looking for.

However there are a few strategies you can employ to make your search a little easier.

Finding People To Cold Pitch

Earlier you looked at breaking your niche down into categories – like Blogs and Companies – now you’re going to use those same searches to find people to pitch to.

When I first got into the Internet Marketing Niche, I’d look for the parts of the niche that interested me:

Social Media

SEO

Blogging

Then I’d narrow them down even further to find what I could write about. Take social media, for example, there were a two options open to me:

Blogs about Social Media

Social Media Tools

So I’d go and look for all the social media tools I could. Which lead to me pitching to Share As Image (now Stencil) and becoming their Content Manager. And, to me landing an epic blog post spot on Buffer:

Think of how you can apply the same to your niche. What do the different parts of your niche break down to? You can find:

Blogs

Retailers

Manufacturers

Corporate Sites

Tools and Plugins

Local Businesses

Fortune 500 companies

And from all of those you can break down even further, like if you were to look at retailers for the travel niche, that could be:

Hiking stores

Camping equipment

Travel Agents

Online Guidebook Shops

That’s just the tip of the iceberg as well. There are probably hundreds more options on top of that.

Be thorough. Dive deeply into your niches and find all of the options of companies that will need writing in some form, as you looked at before.

Finding Referral Clients

If you don’t have any clients at all this is a step for the future. But, I can show you how to get around that in the next section.

Referrals are one of the most powerful ways of landing a client. Because you come with a guarantee, from someone they know, that your work is of a high quality.

I regularly send out emails like this to clients, asking if they know of anyone who is looking for a freelance writer. And, sometimes you land a winner. Like when our very own Matt referred me to Colin Klinkert of SERPed, where I became the content manager there.

Search For Local Clients

You have a huge network you’re not even aware of.

Like, seriously.

Just cast your mind out to all of the people you know and all of the people that they know. There is an endless supply of people who could hook you up to a new client.

Think:

Friends

Family

Old Classmates

Current Classmates

Old Work Colleagues

Current Clients

Old Clients

Your Hairdresser/Barber

Your Social Media Friends

People You See When You Walk The Dog

The list goes on and on and on. Who’s to say what’s going to come your way through these channels?

Two of my first ever corporate clients came this way. A Training Company and a Language Interpretation service that operated across the hall from each other. The first owner was my cousin’s best friend, the second just came and sat in on the meeting and chose to buy in.

There will be hundreds of businesses in your local area that other writers have never even thought to pitch to, either. While they search the furthest reaches of the internet, why not walk into their building and request a meeting?

And, as Sean Ogle once told me when I interviewed him for a Podcast (that never actually aired):

“Get to local events – conferences, marketing events and anything else. There is no substitute for meeting people in person.”

You can find a whole host of these events on MeetUp or pay attention to local publications and magazines.

2 Super-Secret Insider Methods For Finding Online Jobs

There are some really easy other ways of finding clients, too. In fact they’re right under your nose and they can be accessed easily.

Here they are…

The Upside-Down Method

I want to share with you the most effective way I’ve found of getting to write for people. These are instantly warm or hot leads you can pitch to, and the success rate is much higher than any other way I’ve tried.

Take a look at one of the online magazines or blogs in your niche. And, find for times that a freelance writer has contributed. Usually they’ll have a biography that tells you they’re a freelancers, like this bio from Kristi Hines on Nichehacks:

Now, even if there’s not a link in their profile, almost all freelancers have an online portfolio – whether that’s on their own hosted site or a free WordPress blog – so you can find that by searching in Google for their name (include freelancer or blogger if their name is really generic):

Once you’re on their site, look for pages with names like Portfolio or Latest, where they show you a list of the clients they’ve worked (or are working for) by sharing their latest or most successful posts:

Right in front of you right now there is a full database of potential clients that are open to having freelancers work for them. They’re at least paying one freelancer so they’ll be open to others, too.

Using this method – including Kristi’s Site – I’ve been able to land writing work with a lot of big, high paying clients. Oh, and stay tuned for a niche little tip on pitching later on, too.

The LinkedIn Lead Generator

This process is a similar to the above. But, with a little twist that you can guess from the title. You do it on LinkedIn instead.

Once again, find yourself a freelance writer on one of your favourite publications in your niche. Then, instead of looking for them on Google, go ahead and search them on LinkedIn:

From there head down the page to find their Freelance Work Experience. This will either be under the tab of their company name, like it is for Kristi here:

Or under different experience tabs like it is on my personal LinkedIn Profile:

Once again you have a tonne of companies to reach out to and pitch to because they’re interested in freelancers.

Don’t worry about stealing income from that freelancer, either. Normally you’ll be working in-addition to them so it’s not like you’re taking food off their table. You’re just putting it on your own.

Okay, that’s how to find potential clients all wrapped up. Now, how can you actually get them?

This Step In Short

Freelance Writing jobs can be found in three different ways:

Advertised: Where it’s posted on a freelance writing jobs board, forum or freelancer site etc.

Unadvertised: Where you contact a company or person unsolicited looking for opportunities.

Referral: Where friends, family or current clients send new clients your way.

Advertised jobs are best found on job board like ProBlogger Jobs or Freelance Writing Gigs.

Unadvertised freelance writing jobs take some searching; but you can use methods like The Website Hijacker to find companies that are open to working with freelancers.

Or, get involved in your local community and find the people around you who are open to it.

Referral clients come from asking the question and generating warm leads from people that you know. This can be a great method of automating your marketing.

Step #3: Build Your Sales Tools

Writing is far too subjective for someone to determine what makes a good writer and what makes a bad writer.

You can see it for yourself in literature. There will be writers and novelists who have a huge following but write in a way that you just can’t stand to read. I can’t bear to read Harry Potter, but J.K Rowling is still out there making a fortune.

The way someone can choose whether you’re a good writer, then, is:

Whether they like your writing style

How good your portfolio is

If other people have published your work

What other people say about your writing

They won’t even use all of these. They’ll be happy with just two or three of them. So don’t worry if you can’t tick all of these boxes. Heck, most freelancers can’t hit all four of these when they move from one niche to another.

But you do need to do need to be able to showcase your work to people, in order to land the client. So let’s look at how you can start to build these up.

A Rock Solid Portfolio

Your portfolio is where you can show people your work and let them make a decision for themselves. There’s no right or wrong way to do a portfolio, but it should be:

Frequently Updated

Relevant To Your Niche

Relevant To Your Skills

I’m going to show you a few different examples of portfolios so you can get an idea of what I mean.

Portfolio #1: Simple And Visual

This portfolio from Copywriting Is Art is simple, but really effective. If you’re going for a copywriting angle, this is a great one to follow:

Simple imagery gives it authority and is easy for people to see that there is an endorsement of his work. When you follow the links through the image you get a comprehensive breakdown of the work done, too:

Portfolio #2: Direct Links

This portfolio is my own personal one at JamesWritesThings. I use screenshots of my posts, with headlines that link directly to them:

Again it’s simple and effective, but it serves to show people I’ve been published elsewhere and can be trusted to write for their site. When they see a site they know, it’s also a big bonus.

Portfolio #3: Excerpts And Logos

This final portfolio comes from Erin at The Travel Copywriter. She again uses visuals – much like the graphic I showed you at the start of this post – to create a sense of authority:

And to create less of a barrier between a potential clients and buying from her, she’s added excerpts of her articles with additional links to grab attention:

Your Portfolio, Then…

You can see in all the above samples that they aren’t anything special. They don’t sing and dance, they just provide the information that’s needed. So don’t worry about needing a big ol’ website full of widgets.

Just create a space – using a site builder or WordPress or your own domain – and put your work online.

But, What If I Don’t Have Portfolio Pieces?

Great question.

If you’re getting started you won’t have anything that even resembles a portfolio yet. And that’s okay, I’m going to show you how to create a portfolio from scratch, with little to no effort. There are two steps to it.

Step #1: Start Your Own Blog

Start a blog about your Niche and start writing it. Use different techniques, use different styles and start writing as though you’re creating for a huge audience.

You don’t have to share it with anyone if you don’t want. You can have it on a private link for all that matters. But you do need to give people an opportunity to see your style in the context of your niche.

Step #2: Find Freelance Writing Jobs And Complete Their Tasks

I used to use this method a lot when I first started writing. Because, it gives you something more tangible to work with. And, they can go on the blog you’re going to start.

Head to one of the freelance writing jobs boards or content mills and find a job posting. It doesn’t matter if it’s current or expired. Look for one with a pretty specific description, like this one:

Then just go ahead and create an article or piece to that specification and stick it on your blog.
This process has two benefits:

You get to experience what clients are looking for and work to specification

You get to build out your portfolio with real-world examples

You can even go the extra mile and screenshot the job and present it to a potential client you’re pitching too, so show what you’ve done. Anything that gets you noticed from the other freelancers that are entering the field.

Okay, there’s another way you can pad out your portfolio and gain endorsements from people. That section deserves a whole section of it’s own…

Guest Posts

Guest Posting is my go-to strategy for building a profitable portfolio quickly.

It gives you valuable experience working with someone who will publish your work. It also teaches you to work to guidelines, deliver to an audience and what it’s like to have your content published.

For example, the guest post on Buffer that I mentioned earlier has brought me a tonne of emails like this:

And having written for sites like Addicted2Success and Lifehack and got a decent amount of shares showed that I could write for a big, well developed audience too.

This Step In Short

Portfolio: Where potential clients can get a feel for your style, tone and the results your work can deliver.

Guest Posts: Having an endorsement of your work on someone else’s site, even if only slightly relevant to your niche, can have a big impact on converting customers.

Testimonials: These reviews of your work – from paying customers – can be the final blow in converting a client. Seeing a glowing recommendation can put their mind at ease and make them more likely to buy.

You can build a portfolio yourself by just writing blogs for your niche, or by finding jobs and writing them for your own site to gain experience.

Guest Posts can be obtained by following the link in that part of the section.

Testimonials can come from anyone who has seen or used your writing and can be built up over time. The sooner you get someone to write one though, the better.

Step #4: Writing Pitches To Get You Clients

Pitching is a numbers game – more on that in the next section – but you can create pitches that grab attention.

In fact, I’m not only going to show you how to pitch: I’m going to give you my own pitching strategy that you can copy and paste for yourself.

But first, let’s talk about what makes a good pitch…

Pitching To The Right Person

The first question about pitching is usually:

Who do I pitch to?

This is an important question because it can make or break whether you get spoken to or if you just get lost being passed around between departments in a company.

If you’re applying for an advertised job this is usually posted, like in the footer of this posting here:

But when you’re not it’s a little more difficult. There are three points of contact that you need to look for:

Direct Email: The best you can find is a direct email. This is usually to an editor, marketing manager or content marketing executive.

Department Email: There are often emails that go to someone in a department – marketing etc. – that you can get through to someone on.

Contact Form: If there’s nothing else find a contact form under the ‘contact’ page on a site or a publication
Email Tools: You can also use a tool like Hunter.io to help you find the most contacted emails for the site.

And if you really can’t find anything you can use this sneaky little hack that I came up with.

When you’re on a site that you want to get in touch with go to the footer where you’ll often find tabs like this:

Click the Terms & Conditions tab (or Disclosure policy as it’s called here) and it’ll bring up a page full of legal jargon. A quick search of the page and you’ll be able to find and email contact,
like this one right here:

Gotcha. Now, you can pitch to someone in the company and find a way to the right person.

Pitching 101: How To Stand Out From The Crowd

Considering freelance writers are a group of individuals paid to write things…you suck at writing pitches.

Sorry, it’s just the truth.

Don’t worry, I did too. In fact, so did every freelance writer I know at one point or another.

Because pitching is hard. You’re trying to convince someone to pay you instead of the hundred other people they could choose from. It’s a daunting proposition.

That usually means your pitches go on far too long. They miss the point. Or, they’re too short for anyone to know why you’re even writing to them. But I’m about to give you a simple acronym to help you remember how to write a perfect pitch every single time. It goes like this:

Personal

Easy To Understand

Top-loaded

Accurate

Lean

Okay, it’s not exactly the most masculine acronym I’ve ever created, but I know you’ll never forget it. PETAL pitches are the best kind, because they’re guaranteed to get responses. I’ve taught them to lots of writers and they’ve always come good.

Let’s break them down:

Personal

Personal is simple. When you’re writing to someone, you should address them by their name.

This will normally be the prefix in their email (‘james’@pitchtome.com) or on their job description.

If that’s not available I’d suggest you opt for a “Hey Guys”, or “Hi Team” because it sounds a lot more personal than just “Hello”.

Easy To Understand

The people you’re pitching to often receive a lot of emails. So you need to be clear, concise and focused on why you’re writing to them. Especially if you’re cold pitching to someone who doesn’t know they’re being pitched too.

Basically you need to make sure nothing is lost in translation.

I usually combat this by saying exactly why I’m writing to them. Like:

My name’s James and I’m a freelance writer from Manchester, England. I’m writing to you to see if there was any room for a freelance writer on the Company X team? I think I’d be a perfect fit!

Now they can make no mistake about why I’m in their inbox right now.

Top-Loaded

There’s a rule in Newspaper writing:

Put the most important information at the top and put the least important at the bottom. Because newspaper editors cut the information from the bottom of the article.

The exact same rule applies to pitching. Put the most important information at the top incase they don’t make it to the end of your pitch. You’ll see more on how that’s done in the copy and paste section next.

Accurate

You need to state what you’ve done. Where you’ve worked. Provide information that’s relevant to the job you’re pitching for. And, any additional information that’s required.

Lean

As a writer it’s normal for you to…waffle on. You know, write more than is necessary. It comes with the nervousness with a pitch. But follow this rule for writing your pitches and you’ll be fine (this is stolen from Winston Churchill):

A good pitch should be like a skirt; short enough to be interesting long enough to cover the subject.

The 100% Golden Rule Of Pitching You Must Obey

If you disregard everything else you learn about pitching in this article please remember this simple rule:

Read the job description.

When you’re pitching for an advertised job there will be part thrown in there to keep you on your toes. Specific requirements that will affect you getting the job or not.

The most common form of this is them asking you to put something in the pitch to prove that you read it. Like this job pitch where I had to put two specific words in the subject line:

So make sure you go through everything with a fine tooth comb before you send anything. Copy and pasting is great, but not if it loses you a job.

The Copy And Paste Pitch Template

Okay, so that’s how you should be pitching to get clients.

But I’m about to save you a lot of time by giving you a fill-in-the-blanks pitch for you to use.

You can edit this however you want but it is a sure-fire template that will help you land clients:

But James, What About The Headline?

I didn’t forget, I promise.

I’ve tested a lot of different headline techniques and I’ve found two that work, at least for getting people to reply to your emails.

The first, if you’re applying for an advertising job is to put a simple subject like this:

But if you’re making a cold pitch, the undisputed best headline in my experience – and that of other writers I speak to – is to ask a question in your headline. I can’t tell you why this works, but it seems to be really effective.

Toy around and find your own unique stamp. Play with headlines and ideas to see what’s going to get you the most return.

Okay, you’re getting on to the final section, are you ready?

This Step In Short

People are pitching to your potential clients all the time so you need to craft pitched that make you stand out from the crowd. To do that, remember this (manly) PETAL acronym:

Personal: Written directly to someone; in a conversational but professional tone.

Easy To Understand: Be clear about what you’re writing or pitching to them for, and why they should care.

Top-Loaded: Put the important information at the start and make it less important as you go down the pitch.

Accurate: It should fit you, your niche, the job description and what your capabilities are.

Lean: Short enough to be interesting; long enough to cover the subject.

Ask questions in your headline, or reference the job listing, to get the best open rates.

Step #5: Setting The Right Price

Let’s talk money.

I’ve purposely saved this until last because it’s the most highly debated topic in freelancing.

And, I want to make sure it get’s the coverage it deserves. But, I’m not going to spend too long telling you about it. Why?

Because, regardless of the arguments for and against what your prices should be, it comes down to you. Let me explain…

First, It’s About What You Want To Charge…

More to the point it’s about what you feel comfortable charging. When you first step onto the scene you probably won’t feel like you can charge $100; you’ll not have the portfolio to back it up, either.

So don’t charge it.

If you feel comfortable charging $10, charge that. Then up it when you feel comfortable charging
$20 and $30 and $40 and so on.

But do remember you have to put food on the table and you need to respect your time. After all, you can’t get it back.

I started at $10 and hour, and I now comfortably charge $60-$100+ an hour depending on the project.

Set a minimum price that you will not go under by any stretch of the imagination. It can be whatever you think it needs to be, but don’t just take work for the sake of it. Respect yourself and be proud of what you will work for, as well as what you wont.

Thirdly, It’s About Negotiation…

Always be open to negotiation. Now if you have a minimum prices, that’s the lowest point you can negotiate to. But also be open to negotiations on different things.

For example, let’s say you pitch $50 an hour and your minimum is $30, you have $20 wiggle room to negotiate with there. There’s nothing wrong with having different prices for different clients on different projects. It’s the way the freelance world works.

Different Pricing Structures

There are a couple of ways that you can charge client with freelance writing.

Hourly Rate

This is exactly what it says on the tin; the price you’ll charge per hour. This can chop and change depending on the client, too.

It’s not unusual to charge $30 for one client and $50 for another, because the jobs come with different specifications and require different levels of effort.

And, as you saw in the last point, you need to be open to negotiation.

I’m terrible at Math, so the simple way I use to work out an hourly rate is:

How many words per hour

How much research is needed

The average price of work in that niche

For example if you have an easy, stream-of-consciousness style article in the Self Help niche.

That would charge less because you can get 1,200 words out an hour on that, you don’t need as much research and you can wrap it up in just a few hours. Also, the payment in that niche is lower.

But if you have a really niche, in-depth topic, that requires a lot of research – like SEO or Engineering – you would charge more. Why?

Because not only would you be writing less per hour, you’ll be spending a lot more time writing and referencing. You’ll also have to block out a bigger chunk of your day to do it.

The price per hour is also dependant on your experience. If you’re an established expert you can charge more than if you were the new kid on the block.

Price Per Word

We don’t mess about with the clarity of our titles in writing do we?

Price Per Word is one of the most common pricing strategies.

I use it for almost all of my articles, especially on those longer articles – like this one – because it often works out fairer for you and the client. And, it’s easier to pitch. When a client hears 15 cents per word it sounds better than $150 for 1000 words.

I use a similar system to the above for working this out. If you’re productive you can really increase what you earn per hour.

Price Per Project

This is a standard pricing package for small businesses and copywriting clients. For example, when I created the copy on this training company website, I set a fixed price for all of the content:

I find the price per project is normally based on your hourly rate, the hours you’re expected to work and a negotiation with the client. You can create a lot of ‘savings’ benefits here for a client, too. Where it feels like you’re doing more work and saving them money.

Negotiated Prices

Each client and project has it’s own specific needs. So, it pays to have a flexible option where people can talk to you and you will flesh out a price together for the work that needs to be done. This works on a per-client basis.

Getting Paid

There are a number of ways you can get paid, too. This is usually when you bill out when you receive money:

100% Up Front: This requires a built up level of trust but once that’s established it’s easy to employ.

50% Up Front: Clients are often open to this method – 50% up front, 50% on completion – because the risk is lower.

Upon Completion: I don’t usually employ this method unless it’s per word pricing or with a client that I really trust. Because you can retain the rights to the article until they pay, there is also the option to keep it and sell it on if you do get stiffed.

Insider Tip: The Subscription Payment Model

Okay let me lay a little bit of insider knowledge on you:

Clients are sometimes flaky. They’ll need six articles one month, two the next, disappear for a couple of weeks, come back with more work than you can handle and then drop off the map forever.

That’s just the nature of the beast. Not all clients are like this, but there is always a level on inconsistency.
But there is a way you can make it more consistent and guarantee yourself an income. You just need to employ a subscription model.

With every client that that likes this model they agree to:

A fixed number of hours or articles per month

For a set price

To be paid at either 100% or 50% up front

For a fixed-term (three, six, nine months)

That way you are definitely getting paid and you have guaranteed work every month.
Clients are usually pretty responsive to this model too so don’t be afraid to pitch it.

This Step In Short

Setting the right price is personal to you. There is no right or wrong price to charge. Just what you feel comfortable charging, the value you offer and where you’re positioned in your niche.

But, as a rough guide, I’d suggest these prices:

Beginner: $20-$30 per hour / $0.05 per word – $0.10 per word

Intermediate: $35-$50 per hour / $o.15 – $0.20 per word

Expert: $50+ per hour / $0.25 – $0.50+ per word

Look to employ a subscription payment model, or a 50% up front model when you’re negotiating with a client to make sure you get paid.

Step #6: The Extras You Need To Know About

In this step I want you to explore some of the ways to improve and refine your business. And, learn about other technical aspects of the job.

Project Briefs

Every piece of work will come with a brief. Sometimes that can be professional and in the shape of guidelines, like this:

Or it’ll be in a brief document like this (text covered, just in case):

There are also times where you’ll be asked to create the project brief. Or, it’ll come in the form of an email chain or a written on a napkin or something illegible you have to decipher for yourself.

But it’s essential that before you start on a project you create a clear brief for you and the client. Point out what it is you believe you should be delivering and if that is in line with what the client wants.

There is nothing worse – for you and a client – than going in blind and hoping you hit the target. It’s a waste of time and effort.

Ask as many questions as you need to and go into as much detail as possible. The clearer the picture the better the end product.

Offering Revisions

I don’t recommend offering any more than two rounds of revisions. Why?

Because you’re a good writer. And you’re crafting articles or content based on what an audience wants. You’ve done you research and you’ve decided this is the content that is going to work.

You do have to pay attention to what the client is saying and offer some changes based on what they ask for. But by the same token you have to respect your time and the decisions you’ve made.

As long as the article is in line with the above revisions and the thoughts laid out in the plan, then you’re fine to only offer limited revisions.

Invoicing

I didn’t know this when I first started out, you may not have either, but there are minimum legal requirements for an invoice that you need to meet. More than just slapping what you did and your price on a sheet of paper or in a document and sending it across.

If you’re creating your own invoices follow one of these links to see what requirement your country has (English speaking countries only):

But I highly recommend using a service like FreshBooks to manage your invoices. You can just input the client data, send it across, and the rest of it is taken care of for you. They also come with a tonne of different payment options too:

Contracts / Terms & Conditions

A contract can come in many forms and has to be made up of certain criteria, like this one from HMRC in the UK:

Contracts will sometimes be sent to you to be signed, others will be be an email correspondence or done through a Skype call. And, there is a good chance you will never have to enforce a contract, but you should have one in place.

They cover your back; make sure you get paid the right amount for the right amount of work; cover your client and make your business more professional. Much like a project brief, be clear in:

What’s being done

When it’s being done by

How much it’s going to cost

What the end product will look like

What you’re offering

For example, you could do all of this in one sentence:

“Hey Matt,
So I’ll going to be writing How To Become A Freelance Writer Online, it’s going to be 10,00o-15,000 words at the rate we agreed for the last article, and I’ll have it done by April 11th, is that correct?
Cheers,
James”

They accept it. You’re covered. It’s that simple.

Recommended Reading & Development

Phew! Okay, onto the last bit now.

Like I said right at the start of the article, you don’t need any qualifications to become a writer. But there’s a lot you can read and practice on to become a better writer and create stronger, more impactful content. Here’s some of my biggest recommends:

Write To Sell – Andy Maslen: Probably the best book on Copywriting I’ve ever read. It’s not long, but it’s really in-depth and clears up a tonne of questions you have early on.

On Writing – Stephen King: If you’re trying to create content with a story feel to it, this book is an endless supply of hints and tips to create them.

Made To Stick – Chip & Dan Heath: Amazing for finding out how to write and create articles that people remember.

Wrapping It Up…

I hope by now you have a clear picture of what it takes to be a freelance writer and how to start your business the right way.

It may seem overwhelming at first, but it really is as simple as choosing one of these steps and taking action until completion. As Matt often says, “Keep it simple, stupid”, and it’s a motto that works here too.

And if you want to take all of the information from this article and learn how to put it into action, you can also take my free email course where I’ll show you a simple trick to help you get your business to $1000 per month. You can sign up here.

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/freelance-writing/feed/100https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/freelance-writing/Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – December 2017http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/MMnmPMv7xFI/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/income-report/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-december-2017/#commentsThu, 04 Jan 2018 10:00:22 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=50676This is the 62nd income report as part of the zero backlink experiment. This will also be the final income report I ever publish on the blog What I Have Done In December Last month I started planning and preparing for 2018 and December marked the start of executing that. That includes making changes to the look and feel of the blog and experimenting with some new content formats. But I’ll also be killing income reports moving forward… Why I Am Terminating Income Reports When I first started the blog, it was nothing but an SEO experiment which got out ...

More traffic & more moneyI had a little niche with no more than 100 visits per day and after follow your tutorials the traffic has grown to more than 1,200 visits per day and that means more money for me. Thanks so much!!
Johnny Galo - DKSignMT

I reach 50k uniques a month following your advice, Matt !!There have been very few people in the SEO industry whose influence on me did so much to change my approach to SEO, affiliate marketing and creating great content.
One of those special people is Matthew Woodward.
His tutorials are easy to follow and replicate.
I was able to get workouttrends.com from zero to 50,000 uniques per month within 7 months of launching after following his advice.
Thank you for the blog. I learned a lot from him over the years.Anant Mendiratta - Workout Trends

I was able to double organic trafficHi Matt, Your online tutorials are quite easy to follow and replicate. I was able to double the organic traffic in many of my clients’ websites relatively easy in very short time. Keep up the good work.
George Papatheodorou - Digital Bang

Wish I listened soonerI've been following Matt's blog for a while now and kept reading but not doing. One day after one of Matt's newsletters popped into my inbox I decided to take action and begin to implement and follow some of the tutorials. Wish I had done it sooner, it's helped me and my clients!
Adam Brown - AdamBrowns.com

Its refreshing to have a 100% ethical, honest & knowledgeable leader to learn fromMatt, I love your attention to detail and straight-shooting nature. It is a well known fact that due to the massive potential income, plus the draw card of working anywhere, that many 'shady' people are drawn to our industry.
It is super refreshing to have a 100% ethical, honest and knowledgeable leader to learn from. Keep it up, you are an example of what is good in our industry.
Colin Klinkert - SERPED

Great guy, great attitude, great methodsMatt is one of those few guys I follow when it comes to internet marketing. Every time I read something on his blog, I learn a little more. Using his methods one can rank ahead of not just authority sites but even the notorious spammers. Great guy, great attitude, great methods.Harsh J. Das - FireYourMentor

Those stories are the only success metric that matters in the end because your success, is my success.

Took A Break

I also spent the last couple of weeks taking a break in Nicaragua visiting just about every place you can think of border to border.

It was great to get lost in a totally different world and fully rely on Spanish for the duration.

It’s taking a while to “change my chip” back to the real world as I am putting the final plan of attack together – but there’s no rush.

Content Creation

Like last month I only published 2 posts this month, including the income report.

But one of those posts was me getting my feet wet with 4k video while I wait for the rest of the equipment to arrive.

So far the all new how to start a blog tutorial has done pretty well with traffic and I am using this as a test base to decide on future change to the blog.

Crunching The Numbers

So let’s get our hands dirty and see how the blog has actually performed this month.

Visitor Statistics

Traffic increased from 55,657 (1,855/day) to 60558 (1,953) per day which is pretty good for the Christmas period in this niche.

Consultation Earnings

I separate out the consultation earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate consultation leads these are separate projects in their own right.

This month I didn’t taken on any consultation work so made a grand total of nothing!

Other Income

I’m working on another project right now that is part of the blog but not something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet or maybe ever.

I will declare the income here though as it wouldn’t be possible without the blog and ‘technically’ it is affiliate income.

Last month this dropped to $12,212.79 but has dropped off further to $12,019.69 this month.

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/income-report/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-december-2017/feed/71https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/income-report/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-december-2017/How To Start A Blog THE RIGHT WAY Step By Stephttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/-vPjwfx1GFw/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-start-a-blog-the-right-way-step-by-step/#respondMon, 04 Dec 2017 13:13:08 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=50498Do you want to learn how to start a blog the right way? Then pay attention: Because since launching my blog I have made over a million dollars and won 8 prestigious blogging awards. ​Not only that, but I have helped thousands of people just like you achieve their blogging dreams

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-start-a-blog-the-right-way-step-by-step/feed/0https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-start-a-blog-the-right-way-step-by-step/Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – November 2017http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/Ad10cKR65Dc/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/income-report/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-november-2017/#commentsFri, 01 Dec 2017 20:16:34 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=50448This is the 61st income report as part of the zero backlink experiment. Every month I will publish a post like this one that shows you how this blog is progressing and everything I have done across the month to get it there. These reports will help me track my own progress while teaching you what to do and more importantly what not to do. What I Have Done In November November has been all about planning and preparing for the future. While it may have looked quiet on the blog in terms of new content, things have been hectic ...

Consultation Earnings

I separate out the consultation earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate consultation leads these are separate projects in their own right.

This month I didn’t taken on any consultation work so made a grand total of nothing!

Other Income

I’m working on another project right now that is part of the blog but not something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet or maybe ever.

I will declare the income here though as it wouldn’t be possible without the blog and ‘technically’ it is affiliate income.

Last month this increased to $13,386.53 but has dropped off to $12,212.79 this month.

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/income-report/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-november-2017/feed/28https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/income-report/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-november-2017/How The Affiliate World Conference Tripled This Guys Incomehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/PontGdlG1b0/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/how-the-affiliate-world-conference-tripled-this-guys-income/#commentsTue, 21 Nov 2017 18:00:27 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=50100One of the most profitable things I have done in my business is attend conferences. Although they typical only last for 2 or 3 days, the value of the relationships you make and knowledge you learn serves you a lifetime. Well: That’s not strictly true for all conferences and trust me, I have been to some terrible pitch fest based conferences in my time. So when I flew out to Affiliate World Asia I was skeptical especially with a total travel time of nearly 30 hours! But they did not disappoint. Affiliate World was one of the most organized and ...

The Biggest Problem With Affiliate World Asia

That isn’t really anything to do with the conference at all but its the only issue I had and it’s an issue I have with nearly every conference.

I’ve flown home early from Vegas, New York and London just because I don’t like the volume of life a city delivers and Bangkok was no exception.

But at the same time, it did allow me to do some pretty awesome things like spend some days in the Thai Cooking Academy, got some custom shirts tailored and went to see some traditional Thai based fisty feety cuffs-

And for those of you that have been making the same mistake as I have all these years.

This is the correct way to use a toilet for number 2-

I can’t believe I’ve been doing it wrong all these years but they say you learn something new everyday.

The Real World Value Of Affiliate World

One of the greatest things about Affiliate World was how the conference was setup in a way that forced people to interact.

In the public lobby area they had food, drinks, tons of tables and overly comfortable chairs all backed with fun things like ping pong and free massages.

The lobby area was always buzzing with conversation and that is one of the major things that separated Affilaite World from other conferences because that is where the magic happens.

Networking Beer Garden

Continuing on that social path, the Affiliate World team also put together a great networking party.

All of the speakers attended and were roaming around ready to answer anyones questions.

These are people that typically charge thousands of dollars for their time. People like Neil Patel, Charles Ngo and Matt Diggity were fully accessible.

Not only that but endless amounts of incredible food was being delivered to you along with various a la carte cooking stations and of course, lots of bars-

The Secret Society

While I probably shouldn’t talk about this, a select number of attendees received an email like this-

As you can imagine, this event was a little different.

But magically things happen when you throw a bunch of elites in a room and serve them food and alcohol.

I cant really share much else about the event other than this photo-

All Of This Resulted In One Thing…

And that is lasting business relationships.

Not only did I get swarmed by readers of the blog asking me questions, we also did live interviews, I sat down with some people 1 on 1 to help them.

All of that resulted in emails like this four months after the conference-

That is the real world difference attending good conferences can make to your business.

In fact that conversation I had above lasted for around 10 minutes while we were hanging out at the beach bar in deck chairs-

Sat on the right is Jitendra Vaswani who later grabbed me in the lobby to tell me he had written about me in his book.

Not only that, but he handed me a copy of the book and threw me straight into a live Facebook interview/Q&A with his audience-

This guy was an absolute networking genius.

He was speaking to everybody and listening to what they had to say. I’ve never seen anything like it at a conference before, he was everywhere speaking to everyone.

I also had the opportunity to sit with a ton of different people and discuss their SEO problems in small settings-

That really allows me to help people with specific advice and that is where the real value in a conference lies.

And that isn’t just a 1 way street.

While I was dishing out my own knowledge I was absorbing it from everybody else that work in some of the more obscure niches in the world all the way through to 7 figure T-Shirt sellers.

The Affiliate World team have made significant investments in creating environments and events that naturally spark conversation.

And when conversation is sparked with people you wouldn’t normally speak to, anything is possible.

Setting The Stage For An Incredible Learning Environment

One of the other things that I was highly impressed with was the level of production end to end.

Not from just the socially engineered networking events but all the way through to the production of the actual talks themselves.

I mean, just stop and take a look at this for a second-

That is some high end production right there folks and that atmosphere made for an incredible learning environment that enabled 2 way feedback between speaker and audience,

But these were the talks that stood out the most for me-

Neil Patel: How To Create A Digital Product That Generates $100,000 A Month

Neil never fails to deliver in his presentations and he didn’t disappoint here.

He took us through all of the stages he uses personally to build digital products and talked about everything from research to price point.

After the talk he gave a stage based Q&A and was then mobbed for the rest of the conference answering peoples more personal questions.

How Marketers Are Building Million Dollars eCommerce Businesses With TeeSpring

This talk really peaked my interest because I’ve always seen those personalied T-shirt ads all over Facebook.

The panel of experts shared everything you needed to know to get started and I was most impressed with what Ronnie Mckenzie shared-

He took us behind the scenes of his actual campaigns from Teespring and Facebook, showing us what worked and what didn’t work.

Then he guided us through his entire process from research, to testing to scaling end to end and this talk left me brimming with ideas.

My Presentation

My session was called “The Content Blueprint I Used To Generate $423,559 In Affiliate Commissions”

I shared the 3 stages of building profitable content that I have developed with my affiliate sites-

And I also shared 2 secret strategies that I use to boost the performance of every content piece I publish.

That was followed by some live Q&A-

And honestly that is my favorite part because you really get to drill down into peoples problems and provide specific advice.

]]>https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/how-the-affiliate-world-conference-tripled-this-guys-income/feed/16https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/how-the-affiliate-world-conference-tripled-this-guys-income/Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – October 2017http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MatthewWoodward/~3/GKt__I1-bl0/
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/income-report/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-october-2017/#commentsThu, 02 Nov 2017 16:00:48 +0000https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/?p=49985This is the 61st income report as part of the zero backlink experiment. Every month I will publish a post like this one that shows you how this blog is progressing and everything I have done across the month to get it there. These reports will help me track my own progress while teaching you what to do and more importantly what not to do. What I Have Done In October The first week of October was all about open cart week for my product. But: It really didn’t go smoothly – in fact, if it could have gone wrong ...

Consultation Earnings

I separate out the consultation earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate consultation leads these are separate projects in their own right.

This month I didn’t taken on any consultation work so made a grand total of nothing!

Other Income

I’m working on another project right now that is part of the blog but not something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet or maybe ever.

I will declare the income here though as it wouldn’t be possible without the blog and ‘technically’ it is affiliate income.

Last month this was $12,177.37 which saw a comfortable increase to $13,386.53 this month.